Congress in the 1990s may not have been able to predict the growth of the Internet, but it could see the direction it was taking and the value it had the potential to deliver. We see this recognition first baked into the statutory language of 47 U.S.C. Section 230 (“Section 230”), a 1996 statute that provides unequivocal immunity for service providers that intermediate content from other users:

Congress finds the following: [that t]he rapidly developing array of Internet and other interactive computer services available to individual Americans represent an extraordinary advance in the availability of educational and informational resources to our citizens[;[1] that t]hese services offer users a great degree of control over the information that they receive, as well as the potential for even greater control in the future as technology develops[;[2] that t]he Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity[;[3] that t]he Internet and other interactive computer services have flourished, to the benefit of all Americans, with a minimum of government regulation[;[4] and that i]ncreasingly Americans are relying on interactive media for a variety of political, educational, cultural, and entertainment services.[5]

It was therefore the policy of the United States to, among other things, “promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media”[6] and “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”[7]

As the Notice of Inquiry soliciting comment for this study noted,[8] Congress was still of the same view about the importance of the Internet two years later when it passed the DMCA explicitly to help “foster the continued development of electronic commerce and the growth of the Internet.”[9] As per an accompanying Senate Report, “The ‘Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998’ is designed to facilitate the robust development and world-wide expansion of electronic commerce, communications, research, development, and education in the digital age.”[10] As the Report continued, Congress was going to achieve this end by protecting intermediaries, observing that, “[B]y limiting the liability of service providers, the DMCA ensures that the efficiency of the Internet will continue to improve and that the variety and quality of services on the Internet will continue to expand.”[11]

At no time since then has Congress fundamentally changed its view on the value of the Internet. Nor should it. In these nearly twenty years we have seen countless businesses and jobs be added to the economy, innumerable examples of pioneering technology be innovated, myriad new markets previously unimaginable be created (including many for those in the arts and sciences to economically exploit), and enormous value returned to the economy. By protecting online service providers we have changed the world and brought the democratic promise of information and knowledge sharing to bear. It is therefore absolutely critical that we not create law that interferes with this promise. If anything, we should take this opportunity to reduce the costly friction that the more inapt portions of the existing law have been imposing instead.Continue reading »

It would take many, many blog posts to fully articulate all the ways that modern copyright law threatens innovation. But one notable way is through Section 1201 of the copyright statute.

As discussed previously, Section 1201 is ostensibly supposed to minimize copyright infringement by making it its own offense to bypass the technical protective measures (TPMs) controlling access to a particular copy of a copyrighted work. (Sometimes these sorts of TPMs are referred to as DRM, or Digital Rights Management.) It is a fair question whether forbidding the bypass of TPMs is at all an effective approach to minimizing infringement, but it’s an even more important question to ask whether the portion of the copyright statute that forbids the bypassing of TPMs does so at the expense of other sections of the statute that specifically entitle people to make certain uses of copyrighted works.

The answer to this latter question is clearly no, and in fact Congress anticipated that it would be “no,” when it put into Section 1201 the requirement that the Copyright Office consider afresh, every three years, whether certain types of TPM bypassing should be deemed specifically permissible, notwithstanding Section 1201’s general prohibition against it. Unfortunately these triennial rulemakings are an extremely cumbersome, expensive, and ineffective way of protecting the non-infringing uses of copyrighted works the public is entitled to make. But the even bigger problem, and the one that I will focus on here, is that Section 1201’s prohibition against bypassing TPMs is increasingly standing in the way of not just non-infringing uses of copyrighted works but non-infringing uses of computing devices as a whole.Continue reading »